Kalmar Union - Inception

Inception

The union was the work of Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412), a daughter of King Valdemar IV of Denmark. At the age of ten, she married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden and Norway. Margaret succeeded in having her son Olav recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olav inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Oluf III, with his mother as guardian. When Haakon VI died in 1380, Olav also inherited the crown of Norway. The two kingdoms were united in a personal union under a child king, with the king's mother as his guardian. Olav also had designs on the throne of Sweden (in opposition to Albert of Mecklenburg) from 1385 until 1387.

Olav died in 1387, before he came of age and could take over the government. Margaret made the Danish Council of the Realm elect her as regent of Denmark, but she did not attempt to assume the title of queen. On February 2 the next year (1388), she was also recognized as regent of Norway. She adopted her sister's grandson Bogislav, a son of prince Vartislav of Pomerania, and gave him the more Nordic name Erik. She manoeuvred to have the Norwegian Council recognize him as heir to the throne of Norway, in spite of his not being first in the line of succession, and he was installed as king of Norway in 1389, still with Margaret as his guardian.

In Sweden, this was a time of conflict between king Albert of Mecklenburg and leaders of the nobility. Albrecht's enemies in 1388 elected Margaret as regent in the parts of Sweden that they controlled, and promised to assist her in conquering the rest of the country. Their common enemy was the Hanseatic League and the growing German influence over the Scandinavian economy. After Danish and Swedish troops in 1389 defeated the Swedish king, Albert of Mecklenburg, and he subsequently failed to pay the required tribute of 60,000 silver marks within three years after his release, her position in Sweden was secured. The three Nordic kingdoms were united under a common regent. Margaret promised to protect the political influence and privileges of the nobility under the union. Her grandnephew Erik, already king of Norway since 1389, succeeded to the thrones of Denmark and Sweden in 1396.

The Nordic union was in a way formalized on June 17, 1397 by the Treaty of Kalmar, signed in the Swedish castle of Kalmar, on Sweden's south-east coast, in medieval times close to the Danish border. The treaty stipulated an eternal union of the three realms under one king, who was to be chosen among the sons of the deceased king. They were to be governed separately, together with the respective councils, and according to their ancient laws, but foreign policy was to be conducted by the king. It has been doubted that several of the signatories were personally present (for example, the entire Norwegian "delegation"), and it has been argued that the Treaty was only a draft document. It appears that the treaty was never ratified by "constitutional" bodies of the three kingdoms.

The short-term effects of the Treaty were achieved anyway, independently of whether the Treaty was binding or not, because the stipulations as to day-to-day governmental operations were mostly matters which were in the power of the king to decide. And, until Eric was deposed in the late 1430s, he made decisions as to each of the kingdoms in accordance with the treaty intentions. Long-term stipulations, such as what should happen when the individual monarch ceases to reign and a new monarch succeeds, were not among those achieved without problems, as subsequent events show during the next 130 years. At each junction, installation of a new monarch tended to mean a break-up of the union for a while. For the moment, Eric of Pomerania became unanimously the monarch of all three kingdoms. At Kalmar, the 15-year-old Eric of Pomerania was crowned king of all three kingdoms by the archbishops of Denmark and Sweden, but Margaret managed to remain in control until her death in 1412.

It is said that contemporaries of the Union would not recognize the historiographical term, "Union of Kalmar" - that they just understood that much of the time, the three kingdoms shared a common king. While the term meaning "Treaty of Kalmar", the pact, was known already at the time, the term "Union of Kalmar" cannot be found in any contemporary documents. Presumably, the term union was coined for this only by historians writing centuries later.